What Next - Can Marriage Fix America?
What Next | Daily News and Analysis
Slate Podcasts
4.3 • 2.4K Ratings
🗓️ 28 September 2023
⏱️ 25 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Why is everyone—on the left and the right—suddenly touting the benefits of a married two-parent family? And what is it about this institution that appeals to a certain class of politicians and pundits as means to address American poverty, even as it loses popularity?
We consider the public meltdown over lower marriage rates and the renewed interest in ending no-fault divorce.
Guest: Rebecca Traister, author of All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation and writer-at-large for New York magazine.
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Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Madeline Ducharme, Anna Phillips, Paige Osburn, and Rob Gunther.
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Transcript
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| 1:05.5 | I don't know when I realized marriage was becoming this thing people were talking about, |
| 1:11.2 | but when I tried to go back and forensically figure it out, it led me to some weird places, |
| 1:17.2 | like Fox News in the wake of the midterms last November. |
| 1:21.6 | Also, single women are breaking for Democrats by 30 points. |
| 1:26.6 | You remember this moment, a whole bunch of Donald Trump's favored candidates had lost, |
| 1:32.6 | and host Jesse Waters was trying to figure out why. |
| 1:35.7 | Married men go for Republicans by double digits, but single women and voters under 40 have |
| 1:41.8 | been captured by Democrats. So we need these ladies to get married, and it's time to |
| 1:49.3 | fall in love, and just settle down. Guys, go put a ring on it. |
| 1:54.2 | I just want to pause to note how insulting and cynical this take is, as if once a woman |
| 2:00.0 | gets married, she joins a robot army of Republican enthusiasts. But anyway, a few months later, |
| 2:09.1 | conservative commentator Stephen Crowder had a marriage moment, too. |
... |
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